


The Lupin Gang makes a rest stop

by toonk



Category: Lupin III
Genre: Also parking lots, Diners, Diners are a cool setting, F/M, Gen, He's very minor though and is only really there to set up the scene, I'm sorry Fujiko sweetie I did you dirty, I'm sorry I wanted to be more explicit with the romance but it didn't happen, M/M, Original Male Character - Freeform, The Fujigoe is very minor, You could probably see this as platonic if you wanted, well some of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:48:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26383639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toonk/pseuds/toonk
Summary: Every member of the Lupin gang learned sooner or later that it was usually a bad luck omen if Jigen was in an enduring good mood for more than a few hours at a time.So it was a good thing, surely, that he had been, as often was the case when Fujiko was involved, surly and indignant all day - although of course most of this was non-verbal passive aggression, because Jigen could never resist a good silent treatment when he was at his grumpiest, especially the uncomfortable, so-tense-you-can-taste-it kind.(Or, the Lupin Gang make a rest stop a nice diner but tensions are high which kinda ruins it)
Relationships: Ishikawa Goemon XIII/Mine Fujiko, Jigen Daisuke/Arsène Lupin III
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21
Collections: Lupin III Big Bang 2020





	The Lupin Gang makes a rest stop

**Author's Note:**

  * For [J_Lucy_Daisuke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_Lucy_Daisuke/gifts).



> This is my submission for the Lupin III Big Bang 2020! This is my first time completing and posting fanfiction since I was about 11 so I may not be quite up to scratch. I would hope I've improved since then, but there's only one way to find out...anyways, I hope you enjoy my silly excuse to put the Gang in a diner setting. Also this is supposed to be set in the US but I'm not American so please forgive me if I get some things wrong.

On an ordinary evening, Barb’s Diner didn’t see many customers. Oh, there were always a few new faces, wandering in after a long drive never to be seen again. These were usually nondescript types, not too interesting or unique for their looks or speech, and they didn’t usually stay long. Bikers were always slightly more of note - the sluggish serving staff, in one of their more lucid moments, had had the bright idea to start keeping a tally of the biker gangs who came by. These were punks, rough sorts and criminals, usually, but it was surprisingly entertaining to make up exciting backstories for them to pass the long working hours. Trying to come up with an explanation for how exactly these extraneous strangers had come upon this remote restaurant, known only to a select few websites in its mid-highway isolation, was always particularly fun. Memorably, a gaggle of elderly women had once cruised into the diner parking lot sporting matching leather jackets in a hot pink hue that was rivalled only in vibrance by their bright pink Harley Davidsons. Naturally, they had been the subject of the hour among the diner employees, with each heatedly whispered imagined backstory wilder than the last. But if the diner attendants thought the biker grannies were refreshing, they could never have predicted the chaos that their newest moped-straddling guests would bring with them. It was Pankaj who spotted them first. He idly looked up mid-pour from the coffee cup he had plonked down in front of a short stocky patron who had the misfortune of having a round, slightly bulbous face that made her look uncannily like an elephant seal who’d sprouted legs and learned to speak - and proceeded to nearly spill it all over her when he saw two expensive-looking bikes pull-up outside with four passengers between them.

It wasn’t unusual to have two bikes roll in from one of the swankier cities situated further up this highway stretch of course, but what had really thrown him off was the fact that these two bikes were seemingly _gold-plated_ (as were the helmets on the heads of each rider). One bike was carrying two men in suits - suits! _They must really be crazy,_ Pankaj thought. _Who in their right mind wears a suit sitting astride a hot motorbike in the middle of August?_ The one driving wore neutral, subtle colours, but his companion went all in on his outfit with a bright red jacket and what might have been a yellow tie. The colours didn’t look like they should go together, but there was something about their wearer’s confident posture that made them almost work for him. But the second bike’s cargo looked even more bizarre. Where the first man riding pillion had held tightly to his pilot’s waist, the second pillion passenger’s hands were positively industrially adhered to his driver. He had his face buried in her back, refusing to so much as risk looking at his surroundings whilst they were in transit and looking positively terrified - but it wasn’t his fear that made him stand out. The detail of his appearance that most caught Pankaj’s eye was without a doubt his _clothes._ The man looked like he had stepped straight out of a Japanese Edo period painting. He wore long loose garments that Pankaj thought might be traditional Japanese clothes, although his knowledge of Japanese culture was rusty at best.

But certainly the most senseless thing about his outfit were his simple wooden sandals, which might be practical enough if worn in literally any other context, but here they just looked ridiculous and unsafe. The woman driving the vehicle, meanwhile, was once again in perfect visual juxtaposition to her seatmate. Where the man’s clothes were slack and traditional with a subtle colour pallet, hers were tight and fashionable and shockingly yellow, a la 80s April O’Neil. She had the nonchalant poise of a runway model, but there seemed to be something grittier beneath the surface. She was glamorous, but in a way that felt very deliberate.

Now _there_ were some interesting arrivals for the biker gang tally chart!

Pankaj had already started imagining a crazy adventure for them in his head by the time he was finished clearing up the mess he had made of Seal Woman’s table, apologising profusely all the while. What immediately followed was an intense best-of-three rock-paper-scissors tournament in the break room in order to decide which member of the overworked, underpaid waiting staff got to experience a few precious minutes of rebellious entertainment in this place - that is, serve the new arrivals. Pankaj won by deploying his usual tactic, lucky scissors, which managed to somehow win again despite the fact that his coworkers should probably have figured out his very simple technique by now. Pankaj left the room beaming from ear-to-ear, delighted when he recognised the mysterious bikers immediately despite their absent helmets.

Though really, how _could_ he ever forget those outrageous fashion choices? Before he could reach the booth into which the comically bizarre quartet had unceremoniously inserted themselves (with a strategic view of the entire restaurant and easy access to the door in order to facilitate a quick escape, of course), Pankaj, being an experienced steward, reminded himself to gage the mood so as to adjust his approach accordingly. He took one look at the expressions on the faces of the strange, fantastic characters in front of him and knew he was in for an interesting evening.

* * *

Every member of the Lupin gang learned sooner or later that it was usually a bad luck omen if Jigen was in an enduring good mood for more than a few hours at a time. So it was a good thing, surely, that he had been, as often was the case when Fujiko was involved, surly and indignant all day - although of course most of this was non-verbal passive aggression, because Jigen could never resist a good silent treatment when he was at his grumpiest, especially the uncomfortable, so-tense-you-can-taste-it kind. How Lupin managed to put up with him for so long when he was in one of his moods was a feat Goemon sometimes found much more impressive than any of the crazy schemes or complicated gadgets that the great Lupin lineage had ever come up with. But as much as Goemon tried to remind himself this was normal, there was just the slightest bit more bite to the few words that the gunman deigned to direct at his teammates than there usually was, and the samurai found this very unsettling.

Goemon had succeeded in briefly driving this concern from his mind when he had been...otherwise distracted...on the way here. This should have been a welcome relief, but Fujiko’s teasing of him was relentless, not to mention embarrassing, and it shouldn’t have been so exciting being pressed up close to her on that motorbike, the smallest curls of her hair that managed to escape her helmet just barely stroking his cheek as he did his best not to look at anything that wasn’t Fujiko’s strong, slightly curved back - this was what he liked to internally call her ‘focused pose’, wherein she would arch her back minutely and stick her tongue out in concentration (mercifully, this endearing but disappointingly rare facial expression had been hidden from his view on the way here) - but also simultaneously tried _not_ to do that, because he was afraid of finding himself thinking thoughts that were most certainly not work-related or platonic. After they had parked their stolen, much too shiny bikes (Goemon had never been a fan of the things because loud and smelly were generally not the sort of adjectives he liked to have attached to anything in his life, but the gold plate really made them stand out much too much), the swordsman had felt bad for forgetting his concern for his friend in his distraction, but it was difficult to feel bad for long when Jigen had the gall to make fun of him for wearing sandals on a motorbike _again,_ using that particularly abrasive gruff tone he liked to use when he was pretending not to have any feelings.

Goemon had far more patience regarding Jigen’s temper than Lupin or Fujiko did in many ways, but attacking his sandals more than once was simply unforgivable. Goemon fought back.

“Jigen, I do not think you have any right to criticise me for being impractical. I was not the one to foolishly drop my hat in a laser field and then trip the alarm because I could not bear to be without it for ten minutes whilst Lupin deactivated the grid.”

The booth was quiet for a moment. Goemon saw Fujiko trying hard to stifle a laugh and felt a sudden urge to laugh too. But that would be too much. The hurt appeared on what little Goemon could see of Jigen’s features under his precious hat for less than a second, but it was there nonetheless. He considered apologising, then reconsidered, but by then it was too late.

“‘m gonna go fix the bikes. Lupin, you drink my coffee. I don’ want it,” Jigen said after a long moment, rising so fast that he collided with the waiter who happened to arrive at that exact moment, with said coffee in hand. The gunman was so out of sorts that upon noticing his mistake he hurriedly stumbled through an apology on autopilot and took the coffee from the poor attendant’s hand, making as if to sit down again only to abruptly cut himself off and hand the coffee to Lupin, who didn’t waste any time in finding something to complain about.

“Aww, but you never order any cream or sugar with your coffee, which means that now I have to. Where’s the fun in a hot drink that doesn’t have any cream or sugar in it?” To illustrate his point, Lupin cast a suspicious look at the steaming mug in front of him and made a face. But Jigen was already gone.

Goemon thought about telling Lupin that tea tasted perfectly fine without cream or sugar in it, but he didn’t have his ability to skate smoothly over the emotional nuances of other’s lives if he felt like it. It would only sound horribly awkward if he tried to change the subject after _that._

* * *

Jigen liked mechanical work. He found it therapeutic. Whether it was fixing cars or cleaning out and applying his own personal touch to his weapons with mods and upgrades, he always enjoyed the rhythm of it, the order and the particulars of it. There was always a right way to fix a car or clean a gun, and once you’d learned said right way, you were all set. Nothing new to learn, nothing changing or resizing or trying out something new and leaving something old behind - especially if you stuck to older models like he did. That’s what he liked about machines. But people weren’t like that, and sometimes he forgot.

The bikes didn’t need any particular maintenance done to them, but anything was better than being stuck in that stuffy restaurant face-to-face with-

Anyway. Bikes. Bikes that Goemon didn’t like...Goemon. He shouldn’t really have been so harsh on those sandals of his, but at the time he’d needed a scapegoat and they seemed like the perfect target. Because Goemon really _did_ look silly wearing sandals on a motorbike. Well, they probably all looked silly, didn’t they? He and Lupin in suits, Goemon in his hakama...the only person who didn’t look out of place was Fujiko. Damn Fujiko. She hadn’t betrayed them yet, but she _would,_ he just knew it. In fact-

“Hey, is this seat taken?”

Lupin. Being stupid as usual.

“Lupin. This is a parking lot, you can sit wherever you want.”

“I thought it would be polite of me to ask.”

And what exactly did he mean by that, the shithead? Was this a joke or a genuine implication that Jigen was sensitive? Because he wasn’t sensitive. Actually, he was just-

“You want some of this? I think I’m done with it.”

“You can’t be serious, Lupin. That’s the coffee I ordered more than an hour ago, isn’t it?”

“May-be,” he sing-songed the syllables more cheerfully than he had any right to. “But do you want it?”

“What, with a shit-ton of cream and sugar in it, so that it’s completely unrecognisable as coffee?”

Lupin was impertinent enough to laugh at this sensible assumption.

“No, of course not, Jigen, dear. C’mon, you didn’t really think I’d drink your coffee, did you? You’re driving me to the next town, remember? You’ve got my gorgeous face to think about, so you’d better stay awake all the way there.”

Now it was Jigen’s turn to laugh.

“Ah, I get it now. Can’t afford to lose your precious looks, can you?”

He paused.

“As long as you promise there’s no cream or sugar in it, I’ll drink it. If I fall asleep in the driver’s seat, things could really go south.”

“Yeah, you can say that again,” Lupin said, pushing the cold mug into Jigen’s waiting hands. He leaned in closer than he needed to, so that only Jigen could hear him (even though the parking lot was empty apart from them). “Do you think we’ve lost Pops?”

“I hope so. My...mistake...lost us some time, but I think we can make up for it in the next stretch. Did you put a tracker on him?”

Jigen ignored how much he was noticing how close Lupin was to him. He was angry earlier, he couldn’t let himself change his mood so quickly. What kind of impression would that give off?

“Yes, I did put a tracker on him…” Lupin trailed off. He was trying to find the right words to say something else now. His facial journey suggested this was difficult.

“Jigen, I...I want to tell you not to feel bad for what happened. I know how much your hat means to you, and nobody blames you for what you did. Goemon didn’t mean to say what he said, he- we were just a little bit riled up is all.”

“I know that. I should never’ve brought those damn sandals of his into it,” Jigen’s voice took on a conspiratory tone. “But you can’t tell me you didn’t think he looked the slightest bit silly sitting on the motorbike in full samurai regalia and sandals. Be honest with me, boss.”

“Okay, yeah, it was honestly pretty hilarious. But, you and I looked pretty stupid too in our suits. Fuji-cakes is the only one of us who looked the part.”

Jigen didn’t know whether to be pleased or disappointed that he and Lupin had thought the same. But when he really thought about it, what he was really feeling was more akin to frustration, wasn’t it? And was the nickname the worst part of it? Jigen repeated the last part of Lupin’s statement in his head. _Fujicakes is the only one of us who looked the part._

Yeah, that was frustration alright.

But he clamped down on that, just this once. Why ruin a perfectly good evening between friends, out on a parking lot drinking, (wince), cold espresso?

“Ew, are you actually drinking that? I was kind of hoping you’d appreciate my sweet gesture and then order a new one that isn’t, y’know, ice-cold and stale.”

“Eh, no use wasting it.”

“You disgust me.”

“It’s just a matter of practice.”

Lupin looked at him skeptically, but he couldn’t hold the expression and burst into laughter instead.

“What is it? Do I have something on my face?”

“No,” he wheezed. “It’s just that every time you take a sip of that abomination you make this face...I can really tell how much you’re enjoying it.”

Jigen smiled around his next sip. “Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying the show, boss.”

Lupin slapped his partner’s knee playfully. “Stop calling me that, Jigen, _dear._ People are gonna get the wrong idea.”

“Are they?” Jigen tried to raise his eyebrows innocently, but no expression ever looked completely innocent on him. Lupin laughed harder. Soon, they were both laughing, hysterically, in the parking lot of a diner in the middle of nowhere. Typical.

A little while later, when his attention was no longer divided between the atrocity of a drink Lupin had brought him and trying not to pay too overt attention to Lupin himself, who was, as often was the case, ever-so-close to him but still just out of reach (they weren’t drunk yet), Jigen remembered something pretty important.

“Hey, Lupin. What did you say to Goemon and the broad when you left?”

“Oh, I just told Goemon to keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn’t try anything. He should be fine.”

Jigen thought back to the expression on Goemon’s face when he’d gotten off the motorbike, and the way he’d avoided Fujiko’s eyes for at least twenty minutes afterwards. He was sure Lupin was wrong.

**Author's Note:**

> I am aware this might be a little OOC but I hope you liked it anyways. Sorry about the giant context segment at the beginning, I just wanted to try and set up the setting? I'm not sure if it worked or not. Constructive criticism and corrections are always welcome!


End file.
